


nothing natural I ever saw so noble

by thimbleoflight



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: (oh so much femdom!), Choking, Cuddling, D/s overtones, F/M, Femdom, OFFER ME THE CHOICE TO TAG THEM AS A COUPLE YOU COWARDS, ao3: did you mean marcus cutter & miranda pryce?, literally just BDSM alternated with cuddling, what've we got in here...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-04-07 22:54:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 6,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14091483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimbleoflight/pseuds/thimbleoflight
Summary: "I might call himA thing divine, for nothing naturalI ever saw so noble."--The TempestCollection of tumblr shortfics focusing on Marcus & Miranda's relationship. Sometimes fluffy, rarely sad, mostly smutty.





	1. prompt: "prytter where she gets so fed up with him that she gags him"

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry to be That Guy Who Just Posts All Their Drabbles As One Fic. But also, did you really want to click through my pages ten billion times for Prytter porn?

He still makes so much noise, of course. He’s not quiet. He laughs, he groans, he tries to speak.

“You’re exhausting,” she tells him. “You talk so  _much_. Can’t you just… be quiet, for a few minutes?”

Admittedly, with her hands skirting the edge of his waistband, and the slow, deliberate way that she’s unbuttoning his shirt, she’s really not giving him a lot of reasons to be quiet. She does have to admit–here, now, under these parameters, it amuses her to see him disobedient. She supposes she’s in a very good mood.

“Mmff,” he says, which she thinks might be her name.

She presses a finger to his lips.

“You pantomime,” she says, “with your eyes and eyebrows. My god, you could never be quiet, could you? Even when you’re not making noise, you’re still somehow…”

So  _expressive_.

His cheeks twitch upwards in something that might have been a grin.

“…All those silent films you must’ve watched when you were a child,” she says, “ _old man_.”

Wide brown eyes, thick eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline. She pretends to examine him closely–

“What’s that? Sound films were popular–oh, you would’ve called them talkies–they had talkies back then? Hm. I suppose you’re just a fan of acting older than you are.”

He rolls his eyes, and she tugs his shirt back, makes him sit up straight. His hands are tied behind his back.

“A cute diversion,” she says, “but honestly, Marcus– _behave_.”


	2. prompt: choking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "cutter is a low key masochist with pryce and she’s a high key sadist so in addition to putting out his cigarettes on him, pressing her heels between his legs, and pulling on his hair hard enough to make him gasp, she also borders on killing him a lot. what i’m saying is that she likes choking him bye"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Breathplay, etc., in this chapter.

He comes up like a drowning man, eyes wide and hazy, swaying just slightly.

“You used the hand signal,” she says. Not quite a question, just… concern. He holds up his hand–not the stop signal itself again, but just a request for a pause. When he speaks again, his voice is rough, and she can still see the indents of her nails in his throat.

“Oh, Miranda,” he manages, and she checks, nearly involuntarily–it’s just that when his voice is so breathy like that, when his eyes flutter shut as he says her name–and, yes. There’s a damp spot on the front of his trousers, though, she suspects, based on a still-visible bulge, he’s not through yet. “I really just… could not breathe! I was starting to get concerned!”

Yes, that was, in some small way, the point.

“Well, I don’t  _want_  to kill you. I’ve put a lot of work into you.”

He reaches for her hands again, brings them up to his neck.

“Oh, I know,” he says.

She’s had a thousand opportunities, and she doesn’t  _want_  to, but she’s never been the type to leave a limit well enough alone. She’s always been curious. How indestructible  _is_  indestructible?  _Did I succeed?_

 _Can God make a man so indestructible even she can’t take him apart?_ , as Marcus would say, with eyes narrowed and a perfectly symmetrical smile spreading across his face. She runs a thumb across one of the darker indents her nails left, and when she brings it away, there’s a small smear of blood.

“You look good with scarves on,” she says, thoughtfully.

“Oh, I  _know_ ,” he says again, even if the inflections are so different it doesn’t even sound like the same sentence. “And when I wear them, I get to see  _you_  look at them.”

She runs her hand up his face, and he leans his cheek into it.


	3. prompt: "prytter where marcus pulls miranda close one night afterwards"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "prytter where marcus pulls miranda close one night afterwards and she doesn't know how to deal with the fact that she likes having him there and holding her"

It surprises her–Marcus has always let her initiate contact, but, she suspects, he’s simply… forgotten himself tonight.

How strange, that the sort of submission she’s used to–as wry as he can be, as sneaky and consciously disobedient as he usually is–how strange that the Marcus that she knows in bed is… different. Of course he is. He’s a terror in the boardroom, he makes a pretense at intimacy by always using first names. To her, he’s… disobedient. 

That, however, is conscious. His drowsy tugging of her into his arms, does not seem so–it hardly seems like Marcus at all. She’s surprised enough that she lets it happen, lets him bury his face in her hair and sigh.

“–Marcus?”

He lets go with a start.

“Oh!”

“No,” she says, and takes his hand back. His intake of breath is sharp, but when he sighs, he sounds as relaxed as he ever does when she’s in charge, and she… finds it pleasant.

He’s also warm, which is interesting, in that his warmth makes her drowsy as well.

“You can stay,” she allows, and he makes a small  _hm!_ , a happy noise. It is a moment before she realizes that, because he can’t see her face, she feels comfortable enough to smile.

 _I am happy that he’s happy_ , she thinks,  _and I am happy because he’s here_ , and decides that’s a problem for when they wake up in the morning.


	4. prompt: more cuddling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I told you this was just BDSM alternated with cuddling.
> 
> Full prompt: "Ok you liked them cuddling so Pryce gets back from the module and Cutter won’t let her go that night because he almost lost her and he cares"

_Apology accepted. Friends?_

_Partners_.

With his chin tucked into her shoulder, as he succumbs to sleep, one of those baser human pleasures that he insisted she leave him capable of–Miranda reflects.

Marcus cares for her, and has since long before he was Marcus. It has perplexed Miranda ever since she realized it. She has programmed robots to do her bidding, has wired into them a desire to protect her, has given them consciousnesses and warped those (a science, not an art) until those consciousnesses reward them for experiencing her presence. But she didn’t  _make_  Marcus.

Oh, she put him together, and the dichotomy of mind and body is false. There would be no Marcus without her now, regardless of any editing she  _didn’t_  do to his mind. He  _is_  her work. He’s been shaped by the body that she made for him.

And she is familiar with unintended side effects. Unit 214 herself is quite the example. All minds are rivers that outgrow the dams put in place before them.

She didn’t  _make_  him care about her. She didn’t make him  _want_  this–to curl up, flush against her back until they fit together, any more than  _he_  made  _her_  want the same thing. (Which she does.) When did it happen? After the first time she rebuilt him? The second? It must have been before the third, to be sure. Or maybe it was at the moment, when he woke up, while she was looking in his eyes and wondering if– _hoping_ , even, though she didn’t want to call it that at the time–she would be there, every time he woke up from death in the future.

She closes her eyes. She doesn’t need a great deal of sleep, not the way that he does, but it is still more efficient than anything she could come up with. She’s just made it more efficient.

Small use that will be, when Marcus has wrapped himself around her like some hideous tentacled ocean creature surrounding its prey, a boa constrictor of a man squeezing her tight, as though if by maximizing contact in this moment, he will forget what it was like to have nearly lost her. As though if he holds her close enough, they will never be separated again. Does he know that’s what he’s doing?

(Of course he does. Marcus is as purely a creature of thought as she is, but an expert at playing a creature of instinct. He is a very clever clown, her Marcus, so careful to make sure that he acts out what he wants her to see with his whole form.)

She is gently trapped here, and will spend a useless extra 2-3 hours here while he sleeps, unless she decides that she wants to extricate herself. It has been a very long day. She has spent most of it deeply aware of how quickly she was falling into a star.

She does not want to extricate herself.

Long fingers splay over her stomach–the only hold he has, crammed as they are into this silly little sleeping bag hooked to the wall, and she keeps her hands firmly covering his, and God, what she wouldn’t  _give_  to be in a bed with him, as close as this but with room around them to spare.

Like this, with the red gleam of the star outside their window, safely far away and remaining the same safe distance (or, within a few acceptable standard deviations of that safe distance, at least) even as they hurtle around it, she drifts in and out of sleep, Marcus–still so human–snoring softly in her ear.


	5. prompt: "pryce forces cutter to his knees"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "pryce forces cutter to his knees, presses one foot in between his legs, and pulls him towards her by the tie and sometimes by the hair and that’s when cutter knows he’s in for something fun."

He rolls his hips up, even when she grabs him by the hair at the nape of the neck. She’s kicked off her shoes for this–her feet slide over his trousers, god, he can feel every  _toe_. He aches at the pressure, and for a minute, he’s caught between her foot between his legs, and the dull pain at the back of his head. He’s not sure there’s a  _him_  anywhere else besides in those two sensations. Just where she’s touching him, though  _touch_  is too far too gentle a word for what Miranda does to anyone she’s in contact with.

God, she’s brilliant. He finds himself relaxing.

“Think you’ll finish like this?” she asks, and yanks on his hair again.

So quick, so sharp, such a  _jerk_ , that might have perhaps seriously injured a lesser man–like driving over a pothole in the road. The feeling clears, and he’s back to himself again, or at least, to whatever he is reduced to when Miranda is in charge of him.

“Only if you let me,” he warns her, holding up a finger–funny how she’s let him keep the use of his hands this time–and waving it idly. She catches his hand, faster than even he can see (reflexes better than a cat, good  _girl!_ ) and holds it up.

Her foot presses into him harder, and,  _ah_ –he’s hers, he’s at her mercy, which of course, is a virtue that she is entirely without.


	6. prompt: "Cutter buys Pryce lingerie"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "cutter buys pryce the prettiest, lightest lingerie because he just really likes to look at her but pryce prefers dark lacy stuff; she just likes mute colors better and also it’s infinitely more distracting to cutter"

She picks up one of the pairs of panties. They’re smaller than anything that she thinks would fit her, though Marcus has her measurements memorized. And so delicate. So  _lacy_. So… peach.

She wrinkles her nose.

“You wear it,” she says, hooking the elastic around her thumb, pinching it and stretching it with her other hand, and letting it slingshot back towards him. “If you like it so much.”

He pouts. He always does, he doesn’t like that she won’t wear what he picks out for her–at least not  _here_. Of course, she does in the boardroom, all those comfy pantsuits and mannish collared shirts.

…Then again, Marcus does have good taste.

* * *

 

She wears one of the sweet, girlish floral bras with a sheer shirt the next day. It’s a little obvious, and quite frankly risqué, except that it’s under a lab coat like the rest of her clothes every minute that she’s not in Marcus’s office. She waits until about 2 p.m., and then pays him a visit, throwing a folder down on his desk and slipping the coat off and throwing it over the back of a chair.

His eyes flick downwards to her chest–Marcus loves to play subtle, except when he doesn’t. She pushes her latest reports down on his desk towards him. Ostensibly, this is her excuse for coming here. He looks at them for a minute, and then pushes them aside, folds his hands and leans on his elbows.

“Are you wearing the matching underwear?”

Ah, he gives her so  _much_  to hold over him, such a perfect tease _._  This game would never work if Marcus didn’t give her a route to go down, to be fair. She’d find the wrong one, be cruel without meaning it.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

This is part of the game, too–Miranda does not owe him anything. In all things, she is working in his name. He gives her these clothes, he gives her the test subjects and the funding and the  _authority_  that she has–but what he gives her, is hers absolutely. No conditions. No strings attached.

And he gives her himself, too.

“Can I see you tonight?” he asks, looking down at his work.

She does so love when he plays bashful, too.

“I’ll call you,” she says, slips her lab coat back on, buttons it up, and leaves.


	7. prompt: "Pryce holding Cutter close when he’s getting used to his new body?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> me, crying: she... loves him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one comes with a playlist, which you can find here: https://playmoss.com/en/oswinodinson/playlist/god-having-provided-some-better-thing-for-us-that-they-without-us-should-not-be-made-perfect

 

There’s always… waking up.

She sees it in the AIs, which is why she tested this sort of thing mostly with them as much as she could before she tested it on him and herself. There’s always that same disorienting feeling that every human has, every morning–the slow travel of the consciousness down the correct pathways, with a few wrong turns here and there.

It takes a little longer. He’s waking up from a deeper sleep.

“You,” he says, softly, and she takes his hand, placing her elbows on his bed. She doubts that she would touch any of the other subjects, but even if she did, she wouldn’t until they acknowledged her. “Yes… you.”

“Do you know who I am?”

His eyes search her face, go over her nose, glance from mechanical eye to mechanical eye, down to her lips.

“Yes,” he says, again. “You’re always here. You were there before I fell asleep.”

“Very good,” she says. He doesn’t recognize the limits of his knowledge at the moment, and of course, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. That recognition is all she needs.

His hand is cool and dry, and she links their fingers together.

He sinks forward suddenly, and at first she thinks something is wrong–but he’s still breathing, his heart still steady. He’s not afraid. He’s just…

She slides her hand up, into his hair, and his breath hitches, a small shiver runs over him, but he doesn’t move.

“I like you,” he mumbles. “We’ve been like this before.”

“You do, and we have,” she agrees, and he accepts this–her favorite thing about every new him. She doesn’t have to tell him that she likes him back, she doesn’t have to tell him anything about herself. All she has to do is hold him. He accepts the information as it comes to him, which it always does–he is always so pliant like this, but still so  _smart_. He makes no illogical leaps, always waits for all of the information to come to him.

And he is so warm.

“I know who you are,” he says. “You’re–you’re Miranda.”

“Very good,” she says again.

His grip on her hand tightens, and she knows what’s coming.

“But I don’t know who–I  _am_  someone, aren’t I?”

He is always so convinced of the possibility, in this moment, that he  _isn’t_  someone. It is always very frightening for him, but rather useful for her purposes, since he needs to get used to his new name.

“You’re Marcus now,” she tells him. “Everything else will come back later, but rest now.”

She feels him nod, and lets him draw back. He searches her face again until she nods, and then he lays back while she draws the sheets up around him again. On a whim, she pushes his hair off his forehead.

“Sleep well, Marcus,” she says.

“You’ll come back soon?”

“I won’t leave,” she promises, and he shuts his eyes, asleep again within seconds. This is a necessary step. When he wakes up, he’ll remember what it was like to not remember, but he’ll also know who he has been and who he is, the made-up details of the life of Marcus Cutter will be available for him to draw from for his new role.

He won’t need her when he wakes up, of course, but for him, she keeps her promise, and waits.


	8. prompt: "Cutter gets distracted during work"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "a thought: cutter getting distracted during work thinking about how much pryce ruined him the night before and getting excited about it again and pryce is just not impressed at all so of course she has to do something to take care of that"

“Yes, Marcus,” she says, a little irritably, after the third time that he’s half-trailed off mid-sentence, shifting in his seat. “Go on. I really haven’t got all day.”

She supposes it doesn’t help that she borrowed one of his shirts this morning, having accidentally slept over at his place, and he’s eyeing it, both with irritation and with something a little like hunger, eyes trailing over her chest and shoulders to see how it fits. It’s just a little bit too large and well-starched to be purposefully blousy, particularly in the sleeves, though she doubts anyone would even notice.

There are no darts at the bustline, so it doesn’t fit perfectly, but it doesn’t fit… poorly. The buttons fall in the appropriate place on her, which means it is better fitted to her than half of women’s shirts that are available.

She’s growing very fond of it, and she’s likewise very fond of the way that Marcus looks at it, and the way that he can’t quite seem to stop.

“I was just saying, Rachel did tell me that the meeting in Copenhagen went well. Our investors over there are pretty pleased with your work!”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Did you want it back? I promise, I haven’t spilled coffee on it this time.”

He raises his eyebrows right back at her, and drums his fingers on the desk.

“Did I want what back?”

“Oh, how cute. Yes, by all means, continue feigning innocent. My eyes are up here. Do you want it back?”

“Keep it,” he says, finally, and there’s a little bit of a wistful sigh in his voice. She wonders what he’s thinking about. Last night? Another time? Or perhaps the future–one of these days she’d like to open up his mind and take a look at some of his fantasies. The ones about her, or the ones that aren’t, she’s neither picky nor jealous. She’s sure, whatever she finds, it’ll be very enlightening. “It looks good on you. I’m  _sure_  no one can tell it’s not yours.”

“It’s comfortable, too,” she says. “I’ll be sorry when I ask you, very nicely–”

Marcus holds up a hand.

“ _Don’t_ … finish that sentence. Not now. Save it for later, Miranda.”

He’s smiling, without looking at her, and she smiles, too.


	9. prompt: "Tie kink"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly what it says on the can folks.

“Four-in-hand, again?”

He pouts.

“You could tie your own tie.”

He won’t.

They like this too much, the both of them–her, the long piece of silk wrapped around his neck, which is such a delicate nexus of the body, as easy to control him with in this position as any of her restraining bolts, and him…

Well, she’s never really thought about it. She wonders if there’s something sort of classically old-fashioned about it that appeals to him, his sense of nostalgia–a woman, seeing her husband off to work, a sort of Ward and June Cleaver fantasy… That  _couldn’t_  be it, could it?

She glances up at him, as she slides the knot towards his neck, seeing what happens if she pushes it up just further than between his collar points. Sometimes Marcus is a mystery–sometimes, when she thinks she’s known him for decades, and there is nothing left to discover, she stumbles across a way they have never taken before. Less of an unnoticed facet, and more of a dark hallway, where she doesn’t know what she will find. What will he do, if she hints at tightening it further?

He smiles at the suggestion of it, just enough for her to see his teeth, still perfectly calm. Oh, no. She relaxes. Of  _course_. How could she underestimate him?

“Don’t you know the Windsor?”

Miranda smooths out his collar–no real reason to, she just likes having her hands on him.

“No. Why?”

“Oh, well, you know,” he says. “It’s  _classic!_  Symmetrical, if done right.”

“Hm.”

She  _does_  like symmetrical…

“I can see you’re considering it!” he says, practically singing.

She runs a thumb over his freshly-shaven cheek. He smells like aftershave–she’s fond of the ones he wears, though he changes frequently, to keep with the times, always modern, always light.

Then she pulls on the tie, yanks him down for a kiss. He sees it coming, and doesn’t stumble forwards, doesn’t crash into her, but meets her lips with not quite enough force to bruise. He finds his bearings, steadies himself against her, and kisses her back.


	10. prompt: Marcus puts on a show for Miranda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "sometimes instead of letting pryce just ruin him, cutter likes to put a show on for her. depending on his mood he’ll let her tell him what to do, but she’s only allowed to watch and not touch him. he plays it *way* up and definitely has too much fun with it, but pryce can’t *really* complain, especially since she tends to have her way when he’s done"

Marcus is a good kisser.

He’s soft when necessary, rough when Miranda plays rough with him, until the two of them are undoing each other’s shirts, finding skin or at least Miranda’s best facsimile thereof. 

He kisses like something out of one of those old films he likes to watch, wildly passionate, eyes shut and hands roving, as though he thinks there’s a camera nearby and he’s got to convince an audience. Miranda has long since learned not to mind the uncanny feeling that she’s part of a show, and in fact, she finds that her best method, of course, is to shove him off and–

“On your knees,” she tells him.

“Oh,  _fine_ ,” he says, and drops, the movement too sudden for him to be as exasperated as his tone would imply.

“Go on,” she says, and waves a hand. “I’m watching.”

Marcus draws in a breath, a little sharply.

And he likes her attention on him, for once, so she isn’t shy about it, she rests her chin on her hand and waits. Not that Miranda  _is_  shy, ever–perhaps a better phrasing would be that she isn’t  _cold_  about it. It’s difficult for her to play panting and desperate, as he does, but even just a glance that lingers is enough to undo Marcus. Poor man, he really does like to be the center of attention, and she can’t help it, she’s sparing with affection, but… a steady gaze is what she can manage.

She crosses her legs.

“What do you–”

“Dealers’ choice,” she says, raising an eyebrow at him, not minding the delay. The longer this goes on, the harder she watches him get. And it’s no wonder he likes this–it’s really the only time that he gets to have control in the bedroom. “That might change, though.”

“Of course,” he agrees, and skates the heel of his palm over his trousers, along the visible line. His eyes flutter shut, and–

It’s almost harder for Miranda to keep her distance. That hand was on her, after all, not a mere two minutes ago, and just a word or two and it would be again. She lets him touch himself, watches his hand as he flicks open the button on his trousers, reaches beneath the waistband of his boxers and drags up until the tip of his cock is visible. His wrist moves slowly. He’s letting himself enjoy this, she thinks, he’s letting himself bask in her rapt attention.

And oh, his face–she’d almost love to snap a picture, and she thinks he’d let her. He’s flushed from their kiss, eyes half-closed.

(What would he do if she demanded that he move closer, if she hiked up her skirt until she could grab him by the curls and pull his face between her legs?  _Show’s over–curtain call awaits_. God, she thinks she’s never wanted anything more. But she lets him continue.)

“Do you plan to ruin those pants?”

Marcus, in stained and messy pants, is one of her favorite images to consider. Perhaps her voice betrays what she’s feeling, because he smiles that terrible, sly smile, the one with a closed mouth, the one that means he thinks he’s won.

“Should I?”

Marcus moves his thumb over the tip, and he is either feigning a rapturous sensation or it’s the best thing he’s ever felt, because he moans, and Miranda feels herself sigh along with him.  _Such_  a showman. She can’t help it, she’s just as much caught up in this as he is.

She hesitates, just for a moment, nodding wordlessly. And if he was waiting for her permission, it’s good that she doesn’t take any longer. Before she looks back up, he’s already finishing.


	11. prompt: some more soft prytter?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "since it's warm... some more of your soft prytter?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A man in possession of a human form with the occasional deficiency, must be in want of a mad scientist.

“Oh, he’s–” Marcus sneezed. Miranda cocked her head. “– _Wonderful!_ ”

“Put that thing back where you found it. We have a station model to visit, Marcus, we don’t have time to investigate it.”

“Oh, come on, just for a bit! Look, he’s so friendly.”

She frowned at him. Marcus handed the cat to her, and, without thinking, she took it. It squirmed, and made itself comfortable, just long enough for Marcus to scratch at his nose.

“ _Marcus!_ You shouldn’t touch your face!”

Let  _alone_  pick up stray cats, no matter how genial they appeared to be. How did it even  _get_  here? Sure, there were miles of flatland surrounding the manufacturing plant, but… that wasn’t an argument in favor of keeping the cat. Was it  _feral_? Marcus took the little black-and-white cat back from her, and held it up, its paws dangling in the air in front of him. Its ears twitched.

“It’s used to people. Look, it’s letting you hold it. It… probably has some home, somewhere–”

Marcus cooed at it.

“You’re just a  _rogue_ , aren’t you! Why, you’ve even got a little mask. Look, Miranda, the patches on his face.”

Marcus beamed at it, and there was a scratchy wheeze to his voice that made Miranda scoop the cat back up out of his arms. She didn’t set it down–Marcus would be put out if she did–and it made itself comfortable in her arms again.

“You can’t possibly want to keep it.”

He scratched under its chin.

“He’ll have to wander again,” said Marcus, focusing his attention on the cat, “off to where he’s needed! Leaving us to wonder, who  _was_  that masked cat? But he is… very thin. Oh, and, come on. You can fix anything. I’m sure you can fix a few little immune system malfunctions!”

“Impractical,” said Miranda. “Do you  _need_  a cat?”

It wouldn’t take too much, she thought, just some rewiring of the immune system–it wasn’t outside of the realm of Goddard’s research, so she’d have a great deal of resources…

She narrowed her eyes at Marcus.

“Oh,” said Marcus, feigning surprise. “So… you can’t.”

Miranda scoffed.

* * *

“Yours now,” said Miranda, putting the Lone Ranger’s carrier into Marcus’s arms–Marcus’s allergies having been eradicated over the course of five weeks. They took the cat into the spare bedroom’s bathrooms–Marcus had designated it, prior, with all of the cat’s necessities–and let it out.

It explored the counter, curiously, and jumped when the faucet, seemingly of its own accord, turned on–and then it began to drink.

“Oh, good,” said Miranda. “You installed the motion sensor for the faucet.”

“Of course!”

They watched the cat for a few more moments, until it crawled inside the covered cat bed that Marcus had procured. Miranda considered how, the night before, it had curled up in her lap and fallen asleep.

“–I’m not catsitting for you, ever,” she said, frowning. “Five weeks of research was quite enough. Oh–you bought a litterbox already. I brought you one just in case. A new one, I didn’t want to get sand all over my car. I suppose you can set it up in another room. You should have two, anyway. I did.”

Marcus gave her a sidelong glance.

“I had a cat, when I was growing up,” said Marcus. “An indoor cat, even. His name was Horatio.”

“Oh,” said Miranda, considering the lecture she had been planning to give Marcus regarding the care of cats, and trying to feel grateful that she no longer had to give it. “I didn’t know that.”

“So there’s a litterbox, still in your house,” said Marcus. “Interesting. And you said you didn’t want to catsit for me? Miranda, are you sure you want to give him up?”

“He’s  _yours_ ,” said Miranda, stiffly. “That was the arrangement.”

“Well, you can come  _visit_ ,” said Marcus.

“Yes, that would be… nice,” said Miranda, and Marcus laughed, and kissed her cheek.


	12. prompt: wall sex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: wall sex or dirty talk with Prytter?
> 
> I ruled out dirty talk, sorry anon.

He’s strong enough to hold her up, but this isn’t something that they do very often–

She’s not sure why, actually, once they… get here. It’s more out of necessity than planning–she shouldn’t have let this kiss get quite so far, and she doesn’t think that Marcus anticipated that she would, but here they remain, with her skirt hiked up past her hips, one leg wrapped around him. Oh, it’s her  _office_ , but no one should be coming in here. No one even knows what this place is. The hallway leading up to it is poorly lit–it looks like a corner of the building where no one even works.

“I should have told you to wait,” she breathes, but the last thing she wants to do, she realizes, is tell him to stop.

“I can,” he says, and it’s not untrue, he could have all the self-control in the world if she asked it of him, but she’s so fond of how wrecked he is–the color in his cheeks, where his hair clings to his face with sweat, the way he grips the leg that she’s wrapped around him until his knuckles are white. He doesn’t even  _like_  her lab, all the grim reminders in jars of the ways that Miranda has been playing God–or, well, he doesn’t mind  _that,_ as a concept _._ What he minds is all of the… flotsam and jetsam of bodies, all of the disassembled components of what she thinks of as machines that are millions of years in the making and what, perhaps, Marcus quaintly believes should be part of a whole.

(If he were to look off to his left, at the shelves behind her desk in the corner, a jar of her own eyes would look back at him.)

She likes her lab, and she likes to see Marcus in it.

Marcus doesn’t look strong, but he is, and it’s almost curious to realize how easily he can lift her. There’s nothing for her to hold onto, besides him, there’s nothing that she can do except pull him closer, make him bury his face in her shoulder.

He rolls his hips against her. There’s a chair they could be in, but that would mean they’d have to pause, and she likes to see Marcus struggle with this.

“Come on,” she tells him, and he hoists up her other leg, until the motions of his hips press his length along her clit. There’s no reason for that to be hotter than any other friction, no reason for it to send a shiver through her more than his hands might, but it is and it does. Her lab is silent, except for their breathing.

It’s not enough, not really, but it’s satisfying for now.

“–Is that full of your  _eyes_?”

“All the better to see you with,” she says.

“ _Can_  y–”

“No.”

But oh, what a picture they’d make, she thinks, biting her lip as Marcus changes the angle, curling her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck–she’ll check with him later, she thinks, to set up some cameras.


	13. prompt: "Cutter missing Pryce"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "what about Cutter missing Pryce while she’s away and being just overjoyed to see her again when she comes home?"
> 
> I accidentally did it the other way around. Oops!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate this evil couple but I love them.

It’s been so long since either of them have flown on a… commercial airline, but Goddard’s plane is out of commission at the moment. Ostensibly, this car ride is a business meeting, the only time he has for her in his busy schedule, before he’s off again, but there’s so little that Marcus needs to catch her up on–she’s gotten all of the updates from his assistants.

Mostly, she just wants to see him.

She realizes it’s been too long when she looks up, as the passengers begin to filter into the baggage claim area, and a man with dark hair catches her eye, at once familiar and yet not who she was expecting.

_Wyllis–_

Not Fletcher any more, she reminds herself. Cutter.  _Marcus Cutter_. He waves at her, a bright smile on his face, and then turns away. Fondness fills her chest, a pleasant kind of ache between her ribs, as much a surprise as stepping out of the shadows into warm sunlight on a brisk spring day, and she watches him scan the baggage and lift his heavy suitcase easily off of the ramp. She didn’t have to get out of the car to greet him, she could have just waited for him in the car, but she’d… wanted to see him. He rolls it up to her, and stops, just short, amid the fond greetings around them, all the families and lovers hugging. The driver takes the suitcase from him.

She wonders if they look strange, in the middle of all of this familiarity and joyous reunion–and them, standing face to face, her hands on her hips.

“A personal greeting!” he says, “that’s an honor, these days!”

…That’s not what she expected.

She’s trying to gauge any malice in his tone. Is he mad at her? For  _what?_  He gets annoyed, certainly, but he’s so rarely angry with her… He tilts his head, and there’s only a sweetly innocent look on his face.

“I mean, you’ve been busy right, doing lots of voice acting, huh? Branching off a bit?”

“They’re more sophisticated than those GPS units of the 2000s, yes,” she says, curtly. “So I do need to record more of my own voice… Not too much more work than usual. What’s the matter, Marcus?”

“I heard the demos at the expo. You didn’t show me,” he says, and, ah. There it is. The barest pout to his voice.

Hadn’t she?

“A last minute update,” she says finally, thinking it over, “I realized it makes certain things easier… on the back end, if they have my voice. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Just about gave me a heart attack on the stage! It’s funny, Miranda, it’s not a problem! C’mon, let’s skedaddle.”

 _Oh_. She turns on her heels, and he follows her.

“Apologies,” she says, finally, “I didn’t think. I thought it would just be–another voice.”

It’s a short distance to their car, and Marcus tells her about Paris (she has never been), and promises that they’ll go on some business trip there, someday. The driver loads the suitcase into the trunk, and they seat themselves in the back.

In private, with the partition rolled up, he stops abruptly in his recounting of some… dinner that he ate, and turns to her.

“On the stage,” he says, “presenting the new Sensus units, I–”

“Yes, I  _should_  have told you,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m quite clear on that. I will be sure to keep you updated in the future on any changes I make, even minor ones. You should have been able to present regardless. Worse things have happened at your presentations, I don’t see why this is such a–”

She stops.

He’s not mad, she realizes, his eyes are bright, and there’s color in his cheeks, a sly smile curving his lips.

“I  _missed_  you,” he says. “Oh, it wasn’t a problem, I can handle a few… last-minute additions to the cast when I’m on stage. I doubt anyone noticed besides me. But I heard  _you!_  I wanted it to be you on the stage with me.”

 _Oh, it has been too long_ , she thinks, when, in reply to his confession, she reaches a hand up and he closes his eyes and leans into her touch, as if just the brush of her hands against his face is enough for him–Marcus makes this language of touch so easy for her, lets her make her wishes known with her hands where her words would be clumsy. She leans up for a kiss, and he reciprocates, eager but letting her be the one to pull him down.

When he kisses her he’s almost unfamiliar. A different nose, a different pair of lips, but if she closes her eyes, it’s all the same.

She stays the same, but Marcus has never had the same features twice. She tries not to get too attached to any face more than another, in another five or ten years, he’ll be a new man, but… she thinks, this one, she’d like to see often enough to recognize in a crowded place.


	14. prompt: "things you said while you thought I was asleep"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "things you said while you thought I was asleep"

He looks so peaceful when he’s sleeping.

Miranda slips out of bed, quietly, and tugs her light robe over her shoulders (a gift from Marcus, of course, all soft silk and gentle, earthy colors). She makes herself comfortable in her office chair.

He shifts, just barely, and she realizes that she’s staring at him. The sight of Marcus in  _her_  bed, under  _her_  covers, unguarded and bare-chested, is very… pleasing.

“Unit 35? Make me a cup of coffee.”

“Do you want the lights on?”

“No,” says Miranda. “He’ll sleep better if they’re off.”

There’s no reply–just the way Miranda likes the artificial intelligences that run her home–and the coffee machine stirs into action beside her. When the brew cycle is finished, she picks up the cup and just… holds it, in her hands, letting the warmth of it travel up through her fingers and palms. It sends goosebumps up her arms.

Marcus doesn’t stir. He’s tired, she thinks. He has good reason to be. He got caught up in some sort of incident last week, an attempted corporate sabotage that left a branch of Goddard burning. Miranda can’t recall the death count, except that it wasn’t high, and Marcus wasn’t part of it. All the records of course no longer even show him as there. He’d come straight to her, and she’d had to fix him up.

“Unit 35,” she says again, quietly, “run the benchmark tests for him.”

There’s a pause.

“Any reason to be concerned?” the AI says back to her, in her own voice.

“Nothing to focus on particularly,” Miranda confirms. “Just general diagnostics. Temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, a brief brain scan. Nothing invasive. I want to confirm all the fixes I made are working as intended, and to make sure that we have plenty of normal data to compare to in the event that something does go wrong.”

“Yes, Dr. Pryce. Are you worried something  _will_  go wrong?”

“I’ve already told you that I don’t want you to focus on anything in particular,” she says, resting her chin on her hands.“But, yes. Of course something will go wrong, eventually.”

“I see.”

“I couldn’t afford to lose him,” she says, after a moment, a little absentmindedly, and she is shocked by how much she means it. “And if it was–preventable… I need to make sure everything is working before I send him out again.”

It’s more than the AI needs to know. There’s no response.

She sips her coffee while her machines do the work. After a few minutes–these things are so easy when the sensors are set in Marcus, it’s only a matter of pinging them and waiting for the information to come back–the report is printed onto her desk. She goes over it.

Temperature, heart rate, blood pressure–all within normal ranges. She glances over the breathing and the brain scan…

“Marcus,” she says, quietly. There’s no response. “I know you’re awake.”

Even from here, she can see his lips curve up into a smile.

“Guilty,” he says, opening his eyes, and propping himself up on his elbows. “But your bed is just so cozy! Oh, and–sorry for eavesdropping.”

She purses her lips.

It’s not that he heard her–it’s that, for all their time together, she doesn’t know what he  _hears_ when she says things like that. She doesn’t know how else to say it, besides that, but it means too many things. Does he know that she doesn’t mean it in a straightforward way?

Does she  _want_  him to know that?

“–I couldn’t afford lose you, either,” he says, finally, as softly as if there was someone who might overhear.

She aligns the papers, not looking at him.

“Go back to sleep, Marcus,” she says, and he lays down.

“You should come back to bed, too. You’ve been working so hard all week!”

She sets the papers on her desk, and goes back to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr at thimbleoflight for more porn of these two awful people!


End file.
